Money

Copperhead poised to expand manpower and production

Sharon and Craig Ferchat moved to Sundridge from Mississauga to get away from the chaos of the city. They opened Copperhead Distillery a year ago, and have expanded to new quarters and are increasing their company's output.
PJ Wilson/The Nugget

He was living with his family in Mississauga where he and his wife, Sharon, ran a natural health products business.

“You know what it’s like in Mississauga,” he says, with houses built almost on top of one another.

“I woke up one morning, and that was the day I realized I was sleeping closer to my neighbours than I was to my own children,” Ferchat recalls.

So they packed up, moved north – they had been seasonal residents of the Sundridge area for about 30 years, he explains - and continued to operate the health products business.

At the same time, Ferchat says, they looked at other business possibilities.

“I half thought the natural health products business would slow down,” he admits, and looked at operating a small distillery as a “change of pace.

“It was a change of pace all right,” he says.

Now, Copperhead Distillery is their primary focus, and just over a year after opening their doors, they’ve moved into larger quarters and are looking at a major expansion in both manpower and production.

It all started off as what he calls “intellectual curiosity.

“I wondered how I would go about it. I had no idea, no vision. I didn’t foresee any of this.”

The Ferchats got their licences in order and “for six months we were torturing our friends and neighbours with some completely inadequate products.

“Some of them needed a lot of work.”

A few other ideas, he admits, had to be totally abandoned.

But after “experimenting for six months,” they opened their first store Dec. 1, 2016.

The reaction, Ferchat says, was beyond anything they expected.

“It’s been remarkable,” he says, crediting the community with the business’s “meteoric rise.

“I tell everyone who comes in, when you get into a nice community like this, people tell their friends about it, and people are out campaigning on your behalf. People in the community are out promoting it.

“It’s such a pleasant surprise. Every time you turn around, someone is promoting it.

“It’s such a different feeling from 30 years in Mississauga. There, if you open a business, no one cares. Here, everyone cares about a new business opening.”

Their customers also provide 100 per cent of the feedback, and some suggestions for different beverages.

“The customer’s opinion is the only one that matters. That means more to me than a review in some magazine. It’s the neighbours coming in and buying it.”

The original store was attached to the distillery about midway between Sundridge and Burk’s Falls. But everything will be moving up to the new location on Tower Road in Sundridge over the next few months.

Once the business is in full operation, Ferchat says, he expects they will be producing 20,000 to 25,000 bottles a month.

They are producing about a quarter of that now, he says.

With that expansion will come more employment. There are now five people working for the distillery. Ferchat expects that will double over the next few months.

“It’s been a pretty meteoric rise,” he admits.

It didn’t hurt that the business opened its new storefront less than a week before Christmas.

“That was a pretty smart move,” Ferchat admits.

He says the day the store opened – a weekday – more than 300 people came through the doors.

“It was staggering,” he recalls. “Just watching the bottles go off the shelf, we were really thrilled.”

Copperhead started out with four products and has enlarged its operation to 18 different grain- or potato-based drinks. There are five different whiskeys – Magnetawan Moonshine is the big seller – two vodkas, four rums, two gins, an Irish cream liqueur and a chocolate almond liqueur.

Ferchat also has plenty of praise for the various agencies, departments and levels of government he dealt with to get Copperhead Distillery working.

“There was a lot of paperwork, a lot of licences,” he says. “We needed six different licences” from every level of government to open the doors and begin selling their product.

“They were all an absolute delight,” Ferchat says. “They have all been really good to deal with. They’ve offered help all along the way. They’ve been ridiculously helpful. The governments, the agencies genuinely want you to succeed.”

Four of the company’s products – Magnetawan Moonshine, Almaguin Smokin’ Guns Moonshine, Pirate Coconut Rum and Black Currant Vodka – are available at LCBO stores in the area, while the other 18 products are available at the store at 48 Tower Rd. in Sundridge.